


Don't Expect Me Not to Call You Out

by elizabethgraem



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), also keep watch on the warnings because i don't know yet if there will be character deaths, buckynat may or may not happen, but that is the most relevant relationship in the story, but yeah this is up in the air, i will NOT however have rape or anything so don't worry about that, so just know that everything in this is kind of a maybe, steve/tony will most likely be platonic, this really isn't meant to be a romantic story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:51:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6888775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizabethgraem/pseuds/elizabethgraem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of the civil war between the Avengers, tensions are high, even after once-present bonds begin to reform. Can Tony ever forgive Steve for what he’s done? And furthermore, can Tony ever forgive himself?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Expect Me Not to Call You Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nonna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonna/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Gone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6835024) by [nonna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonna/pseuds/nonna). 



_Clang_

Tony watches as the shield drops, settling with a depressing finality on the cold, solid ground, and then raises his eyes to watch as Steve walks from the room, Bucky hanging off of his side. The shield does not give off an echo of an object just dropped and the lack of any noise––not even a dull, muted ringing––leaves Tony feeling lonelier than he remembers being for a long time.

He’s not entirely sure how long he lies there before he feels it; the warmth spreading through his chest, an unfortunately familiar feeling. He tries to look down, although at first glance, he sees nothing on the red suit. However, every breath brings a tearing in his chest—a feeling of lacerated flesh cut and shredded—and he attempts to move, the pain almost unbearable. Upon closer inspection, he sees the faint dark red liquid glistening off of the damaged suit. Not worried––he’s bled before––he continues removing what he can of the suit, piece by piece. First, the arms are unlocked. Then the legs, then the armour around his pelvis.

The air is cold on his skin, and his skin pricks with newly-risen goosebumps as a draft of the brisk wind slips through the cracks in his suit.

Once again, he reaches for his suit, craning his neck in an attempt to better see where it’s been dented or chipped away. What he doesn’t expect to see, however, is his own flesh bleeding out over the suit, a large hole in the metal just around where the reactor meets the chest plate. It’s then that he begins to feel it as adrenaline fades and realization sets in.

A stabbing pain in his chest is all he needs. He’d felt it before years ago, although he remembers the feeling clear as day, having woken up to it hundreds of times since then. He felt his breathing go short, although that he was sure had nothing to do with the shrapnel embedded in his chest.

He didn’t want this to be happening, not again. The very same thing that had changed his life forever. The panic begins to close in as he tries to pull the metal from his body. His hands scramble, slipping over the smooth surface as he struggles to find the latches for manual removal. He can’t help gasping as he tears at the skin either cemented to the armor with dried blood or struck through with indented and jagged points of the suit.

“No, no, no, no.” Tony chokes on the words, gasping and wheezing as his head swims. He was stuck here, alone and dying.

Maybe it’s for the best at this point. He can’ help but to look at what he’s caused, the damage he’s done. He’s never lost his old name as the Merchant of Death—had only thought he was justified.

“Mr. Stark.” Hearing a cautious voice sound from just to his left, he opens his eyes which had drifted shut, looking for, perhaps, any small amount of peace. The peace he could never have but in oblivion. Apparently he did not deserve that peace yet.

He was tired and he felt the desire for his eyelids to drift shut, but he holds them open and tries for a small smile. Through the pain, he can tell that it comes as a grimace, his eyes not quite able to put up the false mirth they usually hold, although he finds he can’t bring himself to care for his mask this once.

“How’ve you been? Weather any better way up there?” Each word is rewarded with a stab of pain, leaving him hardly able to keep back a scream. As he speaks, his words fade off into almost a moan; pain, mental and physical, all he can feel.

“Who has done this to you? T’Challa asks, despite the way he feels as though he knows the answer. Somehow, it isn’t so difficult to believe. For a man that the entirety of a country seems to look up to, T’Challa had not yet seen the pure and intense goodness in the super soldier that he had heard of. Loyalty, yes. A stubbornness only seen in a man who truly believes in himself, his cause, and those he fights for, yes. An inherent goodness, though, he could not say he had witnessed.

“Must’ve been those damn penguins. It’s cold enough here for penguins, right? Feels it.” Tony forces himself to breathe, promising himself he won’t waste his words. They hurt too much. “I tried to kill Barnes. It was a mistake.”

“As did I. That is not an answer.”

“Yes it is.”

“Not to the question I asked.” T’Challa stares down at Tony, still stuck on the ground, with eyes so intense, so dark in the harsh light, they look almost menacing. They would be, had the king been staring directly at Tony instead of with the eyes of a man trying to figure out his best solution to a predicament. Not a good solution—the best solution. Those eyes Tony knows, he understands. He sees them everyday in the mirror.

“Going after Barnes will be tough, but if you go now you can catch them. Just don’t kill him. I made a mistake, it wasn’t him. And he didn’t kill your—”

“My father. I am aware. However, my father is at peace now, the man who is guilty will be taken away, and I am done with my lethal vengeance. I would not leave you now, even if Barnes had gotten away as the true culprit. You will not die here, Mr. Stark, and you will not die today.” Gently and, somehow, without hardly jostling Tony, T’Challa lifts the man with ease, despite the heavy armour. He carries him out of the room and Tony flinches as the shield disappears from his sight. It is his only reminder of his father, the only reminder of the friends—the family—he used to have, left. If only it was also the only reminder of his mistakes, his pain, his loneliness.  
He hardly follows where they are going—is hardly able to—with his focus fading in and out. T’Challa does not try to keep him awake. Perhaps he knows Tony can be strong enough. Perhaps he accepts that if Tony does not want to fight anymore, he does not have to. Either way, Tony thinks of his regrets, the people that will be waiting to tell him he is wrong, again, and, more importantly, the only person that not only will not tell him he is wrong, but will need him right now. He has to make it for Rhodes. He will not leave him now.

He has to squint against the bright white as T’Challa carries him out of the compound into the brisk, snowy winds atop the mountain. In the ever decreasing distance, Tony sees a figure, a large bulk, and for a moment thinks that, maybe, T’Challa has only found him in order to bring him to Ross. 

At last, Tony can see a small stealth plane, one not nearly comfortable enough for Ross to ever even think of flying in. He sees Zemo lying on the floor of the plane unconscious. He wants to kill him. No good would come of that. He would rather kill himself. He cannot.

Not yet.

T’Challa places him on the floor of the plane, trusting him not to cause harm to the man lying opposite him. After Zemo had tried to kill himself, T’Challa had strangled the man, just long enough to knock him out.

As he walks back, he can see the drops of blood covering the snow beneath his feet. The red hand print on the door where it had been forced further open to fit two bodies at a time. More droplets of blood on grey as he walks back to where the Iron Man armour lay, along with the shield. 

Wary of any chance that Zemo had anyone else, he gathers as much of the suit scattered across the ground as he can. The helmet is completely battered on the other side of the room and, whereas he hadn’t been able to smell it before, his focus having been on the dying man before him, the metallic stench of blood has filled the room. Scraps of red and gold lie everywhere and, in the midst of it all, the shield. 

He’d seen it shine just before he’d landed on it what seemed so long ago. The claw marks are still there, four long scratches breaking the previously nearly impeccable surface, but the shine has gone. Covered in dirt and grime and blood, any gleam that might have caught the little light coming in has gone.

He picks up what he can and walks out without a look back, the armour gathered in the shield.

When he returns to the plane, he sees Tony sprawled out on the metal floor just as he had been left. He looks hardly conscious, his eyes lidded and flashing wide every few moments as though trying to stay awake.

“Just hold on, Stark.” T’challa mutters. He receives no response. Moments later, they are in the air.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by nonna (basically she's just absolutely wonderful, if you couldn't tell)


End file.
